Monday, 19 October 2009

Have a teaser

A survival story.

It was 4:58pm when the first reports that the virus had hit British shores. Origionally, the Mezcatone Virus was developed by Iranian scientists in the vaugue aim of keeping the mortally wounded and near dead alive, without pain. They succeeded in this aim, but one of the side affects was a complete loss of any sophisiticated brain functions. They could walk, they could feed and they could reproduce. Reproduction, one of natures most basic instincts; to protect your species and continue it by any means possible. The Mezcat’s, a phrase coined by the media shortly after the outbreak, bred by “infecting” non-Mezcats through any form of fluid exchange. On December 12th 2009, one human Mezcat managed to infect one of the scientists in the Iranian laboratory. This Mezcat, known to it’s handlers as “Subject One” was the first successful human test subject. After this primary infection, it quickly spread throughout the entire complex, reaching the first major city, Isfahan, by December 15th. By Christmas day, it had reached France. The world was in panic, every single border was shut down, flights were grounded, harbours closed down. It was looking like the Mezcatone Virus had been contained, the entirity of continental Europe was lost and it carried all the way across the mainland to China. Throughout Africa it was quickly spreading, there were reports of it reaching South America. But it looked like Britain was safe, until Febuary 2nd 2010, even after the extreme military checkpoints, curfews and medical checks, Mezcatone touched down in Dover. The scores of refugees still trying to escape the virus, through Britain to America, were contained in Dover, pre-screened they would be locked in pens, like cattle. It was here where the virus erupted. It just took one missed diagnosis, and an entire warehouse full of 30,000 people became infected, broke down the doors and overwhelmed the guards. Even with all the military precautions, only roughly 16,000 were killed. They may have been slow moving, but these sheer numbers were quickly able to overwhelm.

So right now, I am sat in my room, it is 7:36pm on Febuary 2nd 2010, my 19th birthday. I am writing this because I want to document my survival now that the Mezcats are here in the UK. Somehow, there is a sick pleasure in watching the sheer panic on the newsreaders face as he explains to the nation that well, we’re fucked. But it’s okay, i’ve planned for this. For months, we have gathered, we have planned and we have fortified. My co-survivors consist of me, David, Rob, Chloe and Jasper. No families, they followed the governments advice to flee to America, supposedly their huge military might will keep us all safe. I didn’t want to leave, that many people, all in once place? That has disaster written all over it. So it is us 5, based in what we lovingly refer to as “the hole”, our home, you could say. As around 70% of the population has fled, finding a decent place to set up shop was not difficult, so after a few days of scouting around we found a nice place, on the edge of my town, Bicester. It’s not huge, but it’s got a lovely big fence all the way around it. We have spent weeks fortifying this place, barbed wire, trenches and security cameras. Got enough provisions to last 6 months, solar panels, and some nice big hefty cars in case we do need to step out of the relative safety of the hole. Now this being Britain we are very limited on how we are able to defend ourselves, but luckily, there are enough hunting shops with enough rifles and shotguns to keep us pretty safe. So that is our set-up. Not to bad is it?

Day two. Febuary 3rd 2010. 10:45am

The phone and tv lines are still up and running, we have gathered enough intelligence to know that there are so far around 10 million infected. Overnight. In a country where there are less than 20 million people left, that’s pretty impressive. But it is mainly because the people who are (that’s probably a were now) still here were around Dover and the huge camps around the London Airports trying to get on a plane to the states. There have been sightings of Mezcats in Ayelesbury, that’s only 20 miles away. It is only a matter of time till we come face to face with them. One thing about Mezcats is that they follow the roads, they don’t go across fields unless they hear, see or smell something. See, they are still mainly human, they don’t have an amazing sense of smell or hearing. Well, that’s what we’ve been told anyway.

11:45am

Rob and David have just returned from scouting the roads up towards aylesbury. They saw them, David estimated around 1,000 of them, heading down the road that goes straight past the hole. If the Mezcats spotted the car, then they see it parked outside.. I don’t know if they can make the connection, but we all decided it is best to be safe and dumped the car in the middle of town. It is now that we just buckle down, shut up and hope they pass straight past us.

6:12pm

I can hear them coming down the road, their numbers have skyrocketed, there must be at least 5,000 of them.

10:00pm

They are outside.

Day three. Febuary 4th 2010. 4:12am

I can hear screaming coming from town, it’s only 3 or 4 miles away. One thing we’ve noticed about Mezcats behaviour is that they don’t all follow the crowd. Maybe it is that they recognize something or they just give up walking, but they just stand there, staring at something for hours and hours. Jasper is on guard duty, i’m going to sleep.

10:15am

I was awoken by gunfire at 9:00am, there was a Mezcat clawing at our outer fence. The gunfire brought out 5 more from the surrounding area, but we quickly took care of them. Well I guesswe can now safely assume that they are attracted to a noise coming from around them, makes sense. Now we’ve got to prepare for the long haul. We weren’t able to gather all we needed before the Mezcats reached our doorsteps, we are incredibly low on fuel and of all things, toilet paper.

1:35pm

We have all come to the conclusion that it is best to gather the rest of what we need now, before it gets worse. What we know if that the first wave of Mezcats seem to be ones who the reproduction instinct is the highest, just spreading, infecting everyone they can and moving on. Those are the ones moving fastest, spreading across the nation. Then there are the slower ones, the hungry ones. Mezcats seem to have just an unending hunger and of course, it has to be that the favourite meal of your everyday Mezcat is human flesh, typical. These are the ones going into every building, searching for uninfected to gorge themselves on. Just think about it, there are 30 million people left in the UK, the weak, the slow and the unorganized become Mezcats. The smart, the fast, the organized but unlucky, well.. They become dinner. So it looks like, if we don’t play our cards right, we’re going to make a nice 5 person banquet. Me and Jasper will head off at 2:30pm, hopefully returning with a few jerry cans of fuel and some bumper packs of bog roll.

5:00pm

That didn’t go as planned.

We left the hole fine, we drove up the road towards town, spotting the odd Mezcat in the verge. Nothing out of the ordinary. We stopped at the closest petrol station to the hole, every tank empty. I guess we should have seen that coming, so we headed up the Esso, to Tesco, to Jet. Every single one empty. By now we’d fired off quite a few rounds at the oncoming Mezcats. We’d managed to get plenty of toilet roll. But no damn fuel. The most important thing! We decided that we’d have to do it the slow way and cyper it from parked cars. This took a hell of a long time and by 4 we’d got just about enough to last us for the next month. And then Jasper said something i did not want to hear. “Jake, they’re fucking coming..” I looked up in the direction he was looking and coming down the road, about 300 yards away was well.. Fucking loads of them. And in a move which was not very smart on our behalf, that direction happened to be the only way out of the corner we’d so eagerly trapped outselves in. I jumped in the pickup and started the engine. Jasper was hurridly throwing the last few jerry cans in the back of the pickup. We only had one choice, and luckily we’d thought ahead. We had to plough through them, which was a prospect which excited me greatly, i mean i spent hours trying to attatch the snow plow to the front of the truck.